La vida es así – That's life

Authors: German Kral. Human interest - BR - 2002 - 75 min

We've all been in a taxi at some point or another, but how often do we give the driver the time of day. If we were to listen to taxi drivers we would hear some incredible, hilarious and touching stories. In "That's Life", filmmaker German Kral sets off to find such stories, as told by taxi drivers in Buenos Aires, Berlin and Tokyo. They don't only drive us through their cities, but through their lives.

A taxi driver from Buenos Aires explains how he is in love with his neighbour and how they were lovers until his wife found out about it and left him, taking the children with her. An Israeli became a taxi driver in Berlin after Faßbinder's adaptation of Berlin Alexander Platz prompted him to leave Jerusalem for the German capital. In Tokyo, a woman taxi driver is embarrassed by the tears she cries over the memory of her father leaving her as a child and rendering her incapable of committing to a marriage of her own.

"La vida es así - That's Life" is a film about the stories of simple people on three different continents. They are stories which say a lot about life and in which our own stories are reflected.

Director German Kral originally comes from Buenos Aires, but has lived in Germany since 1991 and studied directing at the Munich film school. "La vida es asi - That's Life" is a visual notebook of a young filmmaker looking for stories about "real" life: "I wanted to make a film about other peoples' stories. I travelled and travelled, from one city to the next, from one language to the next, and strangely enough, what I found in the end, was my own story."